Am I missing something?

Is it just me or did we skip a holiday? Last I checked after Halloween and before Christmas we used to have this other holiday...Um, yeah, Thanksgiving or something like that wasn't it? What happened, did they cancel it this year?

No, I guess technically they didn't, but perhaps you've noticed the same thing as me and that is that we shifted straight from Halloween to Christmas. Actually, let me qualify that statement, the world around us seems to have gone from Halloween to Christmas, not us. We really love Thanksgiving and thoroughly look forward to enjoying it with a lot of family around us this year.

The thing is, since literally the morning after Halloween, we've been seeing advertisements for Christmas shopping, hearing Christmas music on the radio, and seeing Christmas splattered all over the stores and the newspaper ads. It really does look like the week after Thanksgiving. I can't help feeling like we're just getting sucked from one gimme holiday to another. If you really take the celebration of Halloween in the US and break it down, doesn't it really come down to a holiday where we think about getting. I mean yeah, there are a lot of adults out there who really love Halloween and that's cool, but as far as I can tell, it more or less comes down to parents buying their kids costumes and those kids going out and threatening their neighbors with pranks if they don't get candy. I kid of course, to illustrate, but you get my point. And then Christmas, well if a retail business does get into the black around Christmas then they never will. It's all about the getting too. How many times are people asked "What do you want to give for Christmas?"

So I ask you, what does it say about society right now, when in the midst of poor economic times, we are so easily led from gimme candy to gimme presents and pass up the "Thanks for all I already have" in between them? Pretty sad huh? Now I know without doubt that most if not all of the people reading this are probably real big Thanksgivingers. It just tends to go with the territory when you attract a lot of foodie, homesteading, green living folks that Thanksgiving seems to be a big deal. Here's the thing, we're all susceptible to getting caught up in "The World" and it's directions. Make your plans, both for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and do what needs to be done for both. But try to keep Thanksgiving in your heart this month. Now more than ever, I think, we need to be mindful of all our blessings, be Thankful for all we have and share it when we can with others that may be having tight times. Don't let our one big Giving holiday get marketed away.

Peace friends.
P~